Letters of E. B. White

by E. B. White

  As for letters, a letter belongs to the recipient, and you are free to dispose of letters in any way that suits your fancy. The contents of a letter, on the other hand, belongs, under the law of copyright, to the sender—in this case me—and nothing in the letters can be published, by Elledge or anyone else, without my permission. If you intend to give letters to the Cornell Library, I’d certainly appreciate your letting me have a look at them first, but you’re under no obligation to do so and it would be just a courtesy to an old friend. (Old Friend and Early Admirer.)

  My attic at home in Maine got so loaded with letters, manuscripts, and assorted papers, I finally started unloading them into the Cornell Library. I presume some of yours were among them, which is what started Elledge on his way to Peaceable Street. He has access, by special permission, to classified material that is not available to the public. And I have an agreement with him that prevents his using any of it without my OK. (The lives of biographers and biographees are miserable lives at best.)

  Yrs,

  Andy

  • Whenever permission is granted to reprint something by White, the permission includes the proviso: “no changes in text or punctuation without approval. If any biographical or introductory material is used, please submit to us for approval.” In this case, Doubleday had evidently failed to comply. Helen Lane was Permissions Editor at Harper’s.

  To HELEN LANE

  [Sarasota, Florida]

  January 24, 1969

  Dear Mrs. Lane:

  . . . It would appear to me that the use of my material by Doubleday was less an error than a deliberate switch, to accommodate some kind of format or package that the editor desired for the book. The wording of the agreement seems clear enough—three chapters, each with its title. And I assume that Harper stipulated that these three selections be used entire. Isn’t this the usual stipulation in such requests?

  I am disturbed about the matter simply because I do not like anything of mine rearranged or telescoped to suit somebody’s whim or to fit somebody’s space. I am aware of the problems of anthologists; I am also aware of the problems of authors, one of which is to keep material intact, free from meddling. I never wrote anything called “Stuart Goes to Sea” and I’ll not allow Doubleday to write it just because it happens to suit their fancy. Actually, the title is peculiarly inept or misleading, since there is another episode in the book in which Stuart actually does go to sea—but it isn’t the sailboat race or the Central Park pond.

  Doubleday’s suggestion for correcting this “error” seems to me inadequate, considering the terms of our agreement. I would like to have Harper’s opinion about what should be done. I think Doubleday should either use the stuff in the way we agreed upon or drop it entirely.

  Incidentally, in the copies you sent me, the first sentence of the book has not been revised in accordance with my request of a long time ago, namely, that the verb “was born” be supplanted by the verb “arrived.” This should be carried into all reprints, and it is up to Harper to follow through on it.

  I am sorry that this mess has occurred. I think Harper will agree that, from an author’s standpoint, it is unwise to let down the bars and allow rearrangements. Pretty soon the rearrangement gains acceptance and becomes standard, and then where does the original material end up? I regard each chapter of a book as a composition, not to be disturbed in the classic design of the Reader’s Digest, where sometimes the first four words of Sentence One are joined up with the last ten words of Sentence Twelve, omitting everything that came between. This may be great for a publisher, but for a writing man it is sudden death.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To ALICE BURCHFIELD SUMNER

  Sarasota, Florida

  February 17, 1969

  Dear Burch:

  I’m leaving here on Thursday in an attempt to take Katharine into the hospital in New York while she still is able to walk. She has gone downhill this winter, and her spine no longer holds her up, and it has been a long, cold, grim winter. So, in answer to your question, I’d rather have you wait and send me the letters when we return home to Maine in the spring.

  It is very good of you to send them at all—after all, I never sent you yours, and in general acted in a thoroughly high-handed manner with the weird and wonderful and often touching contents of my attic. I did go over the things I sent along to Cornell, with certain criteria in mind: I threw out letters from persons who sounded a bit psychotic, or overwrought; I threw out a few letters that were in such bad taste as to afford a later embarrassment to the writer; and I threw out letters that seemed likely to be misinterpreted. My only reason for wanting to see my letters to you is that I have had a little experience in selecting what should be passed on to the mists of time and what had better be discarded. (Of course, an archivist will tell you that nothing should ever be discarded; but I have developed, over the years, a certain respect for the validity of the wastepaper basket and I use it a lot.). . . .

  I started clearing out my attic for cold, mercenary reasons. A lawyer told me I could get a substantial tax relief by doing so, and he was right. But when I started doing it, I became involved in two unexpected developments: a terrific allergy to old moldy papers and documents, which gave me a cracking sinusitis and made the whole business very difficult, and a discovery of the delights and remembrances of the past. It is always sobering and inspiriting to rediscover one’s youth in old documents. The exchange of letters between you and me made this very clear. . . .

  Good luck.

  Yrs,

  Andy

  To GEORGE H. HEALEY

  Sarasota, Florida

  February 19, 1969

  Dear Mr. Healey:

  If you want to provide Helen Thurber with Xerox copies of Thurber’s letters to me, please go ahead.

  I must remember to buy some stock in Xerox; they seem to be the ones that are coming out on top in this archivistic engagement.

  Yours,

  E. B. White

  To DAN HAVERKAMP

  25 West 43

  [New York]

  April 15 [1969]

  Dear Mr. Haverkamp:

  Thanks very much for your letter. It seems to be a fairly comprehensive rundown of my literary exertions over the past forty years (“Stuart Little” was begun about forty years ago, as I remember it). I am glad you have enjoyed my stuff and am particularly glad that some of it still seems pertinent to somebody who is sixteen. I have an idea that to the present generation of college students I am too square to be of much account.

  I’m in favor of peace but have never been a pacifist, in the usual sense of that word. The active pacifists, over the years of my lifetime, have on the whole been a fuzzy lot, refusing to recognize that as yet no machinery has been developed for defending one’s principles except by fighting. Kids nowadays talk a lot about love and brotherhood, but I have little confidence in the brotherhood of man, brotherhood being inconsistent with the nature of the beast. I am pinning my hopes on the government of man—still a long way in the future but the only solid foundation for peace, government being the device for reconciling and resolving the natural hostilities that are latent in every community on whatever level.

  Thanks again for writing. I feel encouraged by your letter.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To MILDRED DILLING

  [New York]

  April 22, 1969

  Dear Miss Dilling:

  If I were to be home on April 29, I would certainly drive over to Rockland for your recital.1 The sad truth is, my wife has been hospitalized here in New York for the past nine weeks, and I am afraid the earliest we can expect to arrive home in North Brooklin is the first of May. She will have to travel by ambulance plane, as she has a spinal fracture along with other serious troubles.

  I read her your letter, and she wanted me to tell you about her aunt who married a Japanese and who had a place in Karuizawa. Perhaps you encountered Aunt Poo in my book
“One Man’s Meat”—I wrote a piece about her. Anyway, having been transported by marriage to a foreign land, Poo wanted to import a bit of New England into her surroundings and wrote us to please dig up a wild rose from our pasture in Maine and send it to her—which we did. This must have been thirty years ago. Poo died during the Second War. As far as we know our roses are still going strong in Karuizawa.

  I used to love to hear Harpo play—it was an amazing musical experience. I am so sorry that I cannot hear you on the 29th.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To FRANK SULLIVAN

  North Brooklin

  July 14 [1969]

  Dear Frank:

  The New York Times is mostly an annoyance to me in this house, where it accumulates on chairs and stares accusingly at me as I pass. But when it rouses you to the point of flashing a message, I can forgive it its sins. Luckily I took the call myself, after having entrusted a couple to my wretched wife who produced indecipherable greetings on the backs of envelopes; yours came through very nice and clear. And funny.

  Israel Shenker’s visit to this decadent ranch a couple weeks ago was not one of those perfect occasions that we all dream about.1 I greeted him with tachycardia and taciturnity in about even parts, and I guess he left without a story, because I soon received an abominable questionnaire in the mail and had no choice but sit down and answer it. Between the two of us, the Times’s celebration of my 70th acquired the taste of stale fruit-cake and reminded me of Morris Bishop’s remark some years ago when he read an interview with me by a Cornell co-ed: “You sounded like Ecclesiastes.”

  . . . The day was punctuated by a lot of phone calls from friends, relatives, and strangers, including a beaut from an unknown ophthalmologist of Waterville, Maine—unknown to me, anyway. He said he was young and presumptuous but hoped I wouldn’t mind his calling; he had tended Dorothy Parker in her last illness and this had aroused his interest in “the Algonquin era.” He was just getting into the intricacies of the Algonquin era when our conversation (in which I was taking a mighty small part) was interrupted by the arrival outside the pay booth of an officer of the law, who was interested in the ophthalmologist’s illegally parked automobile. From then on it was a three-way affair, ideal for migraine.

  K is slowly making a comeback after a winter and spring of assorted tortures of the body and spirit. She fell, broke her back, got shingles, then neuritis, went into Harkness for 13 weeks (osteoporosis from years of cortisone), developed a staph infection on top of her dermatitis, played guinea pig to a drug called Methotrexate for want of a dirtier name, and finally escaped by ambulance plane (piloted by a Mr. Caruso) and now occupies a fine hospital bed (the one with the two little cranks) in White’s Nursing Home, North Brooklin. She walks with a walker, gets boosted upstairs and down by my skillful laying on of hands, and is at this moment presiding at the morning ritual of flower arranging. Her borders still bloom, her spirit is still unshattered. The rest of her is in a thousand pieces. . . .

  Love, and thanks, Sweet Fellow, for your greeting.

  Andy

  To RICHARD M. NIXON

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  July 15, 1969

  Dear Mr. President:

  Thank you for your friendly greetings on my 70th birthday. I was very pleased to have them.

  I’m afraid your letter crossed a brisk telegram from my wife to you demanding that you call off the moon shot. But that’s the way life is in this household: something coming in, something going out, all with the best of all possible motives if not with the most sophisticated coordination.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To PHILIP BOOTH

  North Brooklin, Maine

  July 20, 1969

  Dear Phil:

  Joe reports that you will not be in these parts much this summer—all tied up in Oneida. I’m very sorry. You will be missed at the Yard.1

  Thanks for your letter about the Times piece. Shenker did not always make a good choice on what to report, or so it seemed to me. When he asked me how one adjusts to old age, I replied, “I adjust to it by getting up during the night and going to the bathroom and by having a downhaul on my jib so I can lower it without going forward.” This failed to register with him.

  We had a hot spell last week, but yesterday broke clear and cool with a brisk NW wind, so I bundled my friend Joe Wearn aboard Martha and we went charging into the Benjamin River at low tide, where there were only about twenty drops of water and a lot of wind. It was a fine trip, marred only by my failing to make a mistake in navigation—which would have made it sensational. Years ago, when I summered in East Blue Hill, a fellow there told me of his memories of the Benjamin River when his father, Ralph Long, used to take his coasting schooner into Sedgwick. One dark night, old Ralph wanted to leave the River, because wind and tide were serving him, but he was scared he might bring his schooner up short on the big rock (then unmarked) that lies off the end of the bar. So he sent his son, then just a boy, to row off, locate the rock, and keep lighting matches until the schooner was clear of the hazard. A pleasant memory of boyhood: lighting matches at the rock!

  Yrs,

  Andy White

  To L. E. SISSMAN

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  [July/August 1969]

  Dear Mr. Sissman:

  Thanks for the letter and for your concern over my journals. The ages can have part of me but not all of me. (There’s a lot of me I wouldn’t want to palm off on the ages.) Years ago I built a splendid incinerator, a regular brick temple at the edge of a shoddy little piece of woodland. Some day there’s going to be a memorable fire down there, and I am going to dance around it, suitably costumed in a burlap loin cloth ornamented with goose quills from my own goose. I’ll invite you to the blaze. When exhaustion sets in, we can go back up to the house and have a drink.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To CAROL ANGELL

  N. Brook.

  [Summer 1969]

  Thursday

  Dear Carol:

  Tell Rog that I have just sent Joe a note about the mooring, and that it should be in place by August 2.

  I am terribly late in thanking you for letters and gifts. (I’ve lost one of the letters in the great post-Shenker shuffle of mail: I’ve been deluged, and it is really very hampering, as about 90 per cent of the letters really call for at least an acknowledgment. I’ve heard from the damndest people—a man today who said he had sailed with me by night in my catboat on the Sound, circa 1924, and I had saved his life by skillfully avoiding a collision with the Boston night boat, which bore down upon us out of the gloom.)

  I have not lost the shirt, which is beautiful, and which I love, and which is at this very moment in the hands of Virginia Allen, our seamstress, who is very clever at clipping those long Brooks Brothers sleeves off to the right length. Brooks lives in a world of gorillas. Normally, my sleeve length is 33, but to Brooks 33 is just a beginning. It is a lovely shirt, and thank you so much for it. . . .

  Joe and Allene and Steven and John are cruising in Stormy. I think they are probably in Friendship tonight for the races. Martha stayed home, with Joy Hooper presiding, to care for the animals. Martha’s duck has crossed the road, laid fifteen eggs at the base of a fence post about two feet from the shoulder of the road, and is sitting, while cars whizz by so close it ruffles her feathers. I stopped in day before yesterday, when I heard about this. Nobody was home, but Maggie took me across the highway, pointed the duck, then stuck her head under the cable (guard rail) and rested her chin on the back of the sitting duck, who never stirred.

  Fred Parson has been asking for you, and others whom I can’t remember. Dean Rusk was a recent house guest of the Russell Wigginses. Haying is over, thank God. Jones is well and very active in the field. My boathouse has had its face lifted, and I can now work down there no matter what the weather is. Donna’s baby is beginning to show. Carol Eaton’s baby is beginning to show. And come
to think of it, my own stomach isn’t as flat as it might be.

  Everything will be a whole lot better and merrier when you and Rog get here, so hurry up. And thanks again for being so good to me on my birthday.

  Love,

  Andy

  To MARGO TODD

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  August 15, 1969

  Dear Mrs. Todd:

  You were very kind to send me such a detailed accounting. I am, of course, pleased to get the report of your adventures and satisfactions. I like to hear from librarians and to know that my stories are being read to children.

  I was alarmed at your idea of suggesting to a child that he model himself after me. Writing is a form of imposture; I’m not at all sure I am anything like the person I seem to a reader. And you certainly wouldn’t want to urge a child to model himself after an impostor!

  But I appreciate your confidence, which is implied.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To MARY VIRGINIA PARRISH

  [North Brooklin, Maine]

  August 29, 1969

  Dear Mrs. Parrish:

  Writing, which is my way of serving, is hard work for me and usually not attended with any joy. It has its satisfactions, but the act of writing is often a pure headache, and I don’t kid myself about there being any joy in it. When I want some fun, I don’t write, I go sailing. So I often find it hard to plan the day.

  Unlike you, I have no faith, only a suitcaseful of beliefs that sustain me. Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

  Sincerely,

  E. B. White

  To ROBERT M. COATES

  North Brooklin